Meet the Winners of This Year's Ig Nobel Prizes

Rats in tiny trousers, pseudoscientific bullshit, the personalities of rocks, and Volkswagen’s, shall we say, “creative” approach to emissions testing were among the research topics honoured by the 2016 Ig Nobel Prizes. The winners were announced last night at a live webcast ceremony held at Harvard University.

For those unfamiliar with the Ig Nobel Prizes, it’s an annual celebration of silly science. Or a silly celebration of seemingly dubious science, courtesy of the satirical journalAnnals of Improbable Research. The main objective is to honour research that first makes you laugh, and then makes you think. It’s all in good fun, and the honourees frequently travel to the ceremony on their own dime to accept their awards.

This year’s crop of Ig Nobel Laureates is listed below. Those who attended the ceremony were given just 60 seconds for their acceptance speeches, a longstanding rule that was, as always, vigorously enforced (the Oscars could learn a thing or two from the Ig Nobels).

If you happen to be in the vicinity of MIT this Saturday afternoon, many of the winners will be giving free public mini-lectures — five minutes each, plus time to answer questions.

Reproduction Prize: The late Ahmed Shafik, for studying the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats, and for conducting similar tests with human males.

Medicine Prize: Christoph Helmchen, Carina Palzer, Thomas Münte, Silke Anders, and Andreas Sprenger, for discovering that if you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by looking into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice versa).

Biology Prize: Awarded jointly to: Charles Foster, for living in the wild as, at different times, a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, and a bird; and to Thomas Thwaites, for creating prosthetic extensions of his limbs that allowed him to move in the manner of, and spend time roaming hills in the company of, goats

Psychology Prize: Verschuere, for asking a thousand liars how often they lie, and for deciding whether to believe those answers.